She sent word to my father that she meant to come on a
particular day when, as she evidently knew, I should not be present. Two
or three hours later I had Prince Otto's cartel in my hands. Jorian
DeWitt, our guest at this season, told me subsequently, and with the
utmost seriousness, that I was largely indebted to Mdlle. Jenny for a
touching French song of a beau chevalier she sang before Ottilia in my
absence. Both he and my father believed in the efficacy of this kind of
enginery, but, as the case happened, the beau chevalier was down low
enough at the moment his highborn lady listened to the song.

It appeared that when Prince Otto met me after my interview with Prince
Ernest, he did his best to provoke a rencontre, and failing to get
anything but a nod from my stunned head, betook himself to my University.
A friendly young fellow there, Eckart vom Hof, offered to fight him on my
behalf, should I think proper to refuse. Eckart and two or three others
made a spirited stand against the aristocratic party siding with Prince
Otto, whose case was that I had played him a dishonourable trick to laugh
at him. I had, in truth, persuaded him to relieve me at once of horse and
rival at the moment when he was suffering the tortures of a rejection,
and I was rushing to take the hand he coveted; I was so far guilty. But
to how great a degree guiltless, how could I possibly explain to the
satisfaction of an angry man? I had the vision of him leaping on the
horse, while I perused his challenge; saw him fix to the saddle and smile
hard, and away to do me of all services the last he would have performed
wittingly. The situation was exactly of a sort for one of his German
phantasy-writers to image the forest jeering at him as he flew, blind,
deaf, and unreasonable, vehement for one fierce draught of speed. We are
all dogged by the humour of following events when we start on a wind of
passion. I could almost fancy myself an accomplice. I realized the scene
with such intensity in the light running at his heels: it may be quite
true that I laughed in the hearing of his messenger as I folded up the
letter. That was the man's report. I am not commonly one to be forgetful
of due observances.

The prospect of the possible eternal separation from my beloved pricked
my mechanical wits and set them tracing the consequent line by which I
had been brought to this pass as to a natural result. Had not my father
succeeded in inspiring the idea that